January 23-27

Hello families,

This week in first grade I have begun one on one reading assessments. I have been meeting with students for our January reading and writing assessments. This will take a few weeks. As the assessment takes place, I will stop taking reading groups. Please continue to read at home to and with your child daily. Practice retelling the story after reading...include the beginning, middle and end, characters, problem/solution.

We read the book Sheila Rae the Brave by Kevin Henkes. We discussed the character trait "fearless." We found ways the author showed the characters were fearless in the story. We wrote about the book and showed the different characters perspectives on a "circle of viewpoints" graphic organizer.

In writing we have moved on to a new unit of writing called "Authors as Mentors." We will study authors and look closely at craft moves that authors use to engage their readers. This week we have read two books by Angela Johnson, Joshua's Night Whispers and The Leaving Morning. We noticed that both books were small moments. The author kept the story about one thing. She used ellipses or the "dot, dot, dot" to show the writing was not finished or to make a lists over several pages. We are trying these techniques out in our own writing.

In math, we have continued to work on place value. We have begun scrolling! We are noticing patterns in numbers and learning how to write higher numbers. We played the base-10 exchange game. We will be finishing unit 5 next week and having a unit test soon.

In Science we have completed our Solids and Liquids unit. We made butter last week to show how a liquid becomes a solid. We shook heavy cream in a sealed jar and turn the cream to butter. Then we wrote How to Make Butter! Brave students sampled the butter and said it tasted creamy!

Next week we have a half day on February 1. Students will be dismissed at 12:05.

Thank you and have a great weekend!
Mrs. Scheck

Week of January 4-6

Dear families,

Happy New Year and welcome back to school! We are having a busy, short week here in room 109.
We have gotten back into the swing of school the last two days. We began yesterday by sharing what we did over our winter break. We wrote New Year books about our goals for 2017. Many students wrote about reading and writing goals.

This week we read the book Matthew and Tilly by Rebecca C. Jones. We read the story and practiced retelling the story orally. We talked about connections to the book after reading. We wrote about "Text to self" connections, a new comprehension strategy we will be working on the next few weeks.

We are finishing up our writing unit called Writing for Readers. Today students chose a piece of writing to "fancy up" by fixing spelling and punctuation. We also added color illustrations to our stories. We shared some of our stories in class. We will begin a new unit of writing next week called How-to or procedural writing.

In science we are nearing the end of the Solids and Liquids unit. This week we will work with solids in containers. Next week we will explore mixtures and solutions. We will put several different solids (candy, a cookie, rock salt) in water to watch them dissolve completely then evaporate over several days. We will observe how the water changed the solid. It will be exciting to see what is left after the water evaporates! This is also a fun experiment to try at home!

In math, we have just completed unit 4. We will have a cumulative test tomorrow which will cover units 3 and 4. We will begin unit 5 next week. Look for a family letter to come home detailing the specifics of what we will be learning.

Have a great night!
Mrs. Scheck